are attractive and what is attractive about those ideas? why do they answer to people servile aspirations and without understanding that you cannot understand or persuade people to the way of thinking politically that you find a greater good for the a greater number which would be the democratic tradition and/or the idea a strong central government could deliver the most prosperity to the most people with liberty and individual autonomy. . .

i don't know i think david frost would have better manned that one. >> rick perlstein, author of "nixonland". >> activist in the movement against mountain top mining fight what they called the destruction of their land and we of life from the sake of the coal industry. carmichael's book store in louisville kentucky hosted this event. it's about 40 minutes.

>> i have to wear my sunglasses. i'm sorry. i am not trying to be cool. i just can't see. i want to read about ten minutes from my new book, "something's rising," which i wrote with jason howard, like a lawyer who will read after me. and we spent about two and half years working on this book and it was the most emotionally devastating book i have ever worked on. we traveled all over the region, all over appalachian, met all kinds of people that are not in the book and finally focused on 12 people we've wrote long magazine stuffed and turned over to them and let them do a lot oral history so it was an exercise in capturing people's voices. one of the things we know is being lost in mountaintop removal is the storytelling and people's voices. that is being ground down into

the ground the voices of the people so we wanted to make a book that reserved those voices and let the people tell their own story. so, this section on and going to read from is about vana [inaudible] already been active in standing up for the people, and as you will see in this little bit i am going to read now prone land is up for threat after she fought for everybody else's land, her land is at risk. it is called little acts of preakness. bev moves up the steep mountain much like she must have as a little girl growing up on willson creek kentucky. her trusty dog, rufus, mixed breed with a noble profile is barely able to stay ahead although he seems intent on doing so. proclaiming his steady, her steps white and she never stops talking, eager to introduce

those to the place she loves so much, the place she's terrified of losing. like that young hero, mazie is conscious of everything. she points out dear tracks, will read leave decorated in the otherwise some are ground up the woods, a blue jay for others drifted down and come to rest on a rot and log. she runs her hand over the trunk, glances at the sky and comments on its deep aching blue. this woman is one with the mountain. they know and respect each other. this is apparent not only in the way that may talks about the mountain but the way she moves with ease and grace, stepping lightly so as to disturb the least amount of responsible. even though she often says i can't get up here as fast as i used to, this is hard to believe, may is a woman who is used to being in motion. she's a medical professional,

old-time fiddle work and activist. she moves with determination. her arms pushing at the air, her legs intent on the purpose, her feet on a mission. today she is on her way to the rocks, her favorite place in the world and although she wants to take her time and enjoy the walk she is also eager to reach the ridge top where she will once again encounter this natural castle rock, secret world only the inhabitants of this no one they have been frequenting since the early 1800's. may's mission is not only to take us to the high rocks but to save them. they, like most of the land may has known all of her life, are in grave danger. it all started one morning in november, 2006 at the grace of a methodist church when a neighbor bragged after the surface that may's brother's mining company

in the head of willson creek. this matter also claimed three other families had already sold. it turned out a neighbor was misinformed. no one on willson creek has sold anything yet. but the coal company is breathing down their necks and as of this ride it seems the company is intent on mining in and of mount wilson creek including the long ridge where we stand now. and bev may is not certain that her neighbors won't sell. money talks, she says, especially when you need it. may, fearing if only one neighbor sold a domino effect might result and she went straight into action. with help from kftc she secured space at a community space in the town and went door-to-door to invite people to organize and fight the coal company that seemed intent on invading their world. several months before the summer

time john that the mountain may has presided the second meeting on a cold night in december. concerned citizens are gathered in the community center which was once the lunch room for an elementary school. may town is made up of 200 souls well-kept houses and abandoned schools, four, five streets, an old camper serves as the community's door where cigarettes, pop and candy are advertised and spray-painted handwriting on the exterior walls. the little town sits in a bowl of the town. the mountains in circling like a gray jacket arms. this might then snowfalls like tiny feathers and the cold makes the night the weight of the moon seem even blacker. the community center is freezing but the furnace has been fired up and rumbles as everyone fires in pressuring snowflakes from their hair. the group is gathered close in a circle not only to hear but to gain one another's heat.

may sits on a couch that seems to swallow her silently watching for more people to arrive. the others are caught up in various states of conversation. they're talking is punctuated by laughter. i guess we ought to get started, may says so quietly that it's surprising when everyone stops talking at once and turns to face her. however, everything about may, her face, courage, the way she uses her hands to illustrate what she's saying suggests kindness and intelligence. this is a woman worth listening to. may launches into the meeting intent on getting business done but not aggressively. she wants to include everyone to make sure all of those gathered have the chance to say their peace. she goes around the room, allows everyone to introduce themselves, gives all of the present time to make their announcements. many of the residents are here because they absolutely do not want the coal company to come into their hauler. others are here because they haven't figured everything out

and they want all the information they can get. some have already been lied to by the company and are here to warn their neighbors. others don't know what to believe. like many of the social movements in appellation the rising chorus of willson creek is largely made up of women. there are too elegant older ladies and dress pants and sputters and earnest young woman who is new to the group and is taking into account everything around her. a vivacious woman in her 60s who is wrapped up in her husband's puffy code and gives off a wonderful error of not giving a what anyone thinks of her. i don't give a what anyone thinks of me, she says. she's loudly relating how she told of one of the man who came to her house to try to talk her into selling. the circle around her collapses and laughter when she delivers her blonde replied to the man's encouragement. several other women are there to represent their families who promised to fight to the bitter end before they will sell to a

coal company known for bullying people into signing away their rights. these are strong appellation women, tough as coal trucks, clever as foxes, as spirited as the music of these mountains. one of the young women is concerned what will happen to her to asthmatic children of the coal trucks start running up and down the road. there will be so much dust off the road, she says looking around the room so that her eyes meet those of everyone else. she twisted her wedding band ran her finger while she talks. her hands are hard working and chat. hands that have known scalding a dishwater and mop water, hands that have scrubbed counters and carried pleats, grabbed ahold of hot skillet handles. this woman is worn out from just trying to get by and she now has another aggravation. a threat to her children. finally, her hands become still in her lap. she looks down briefly as if

this manner of talk has worn her out and then lift her head. if we let this company come in here i just don't know what i will do because my children will not be able to stand it. well, bev says, we will just have to make sure they don't come in here than. her way of speaking is reassuring and many of the women nodded, a gathering of strong forces determined to fight back. may offers a reassuring smile and some of the frustration falls out of the women's stiff shoulders. sometimes may admits she thinks what would be like to lose this mountain. but then i can't think about that, she says. it makes me feel like i'm falling off the edge of a cliff to think about that. it's too painful, too much. so the thing to do is make sure it doesn't happen, she says. i realize fighting the coal companies like david and goliath, but i have to keep hope. but then she remembers that

david ended up winning his fight. may doesn't understand people who can't see what is wrong with mountaintop removal. at the suggestion there might be another side to the fact, say a positive side to the mining practice she grows fidgety bringing her hands, it is morally wrong, she says because every mountain and kentucky is ours. our heritage and in some cases it is the only legacy we have. whenever the blast and other mountain they are blasting away the future, the lumber, the watershed, the wild life, tourism, sustainable communities, everything. there ain't no putting it back, she says. she laughs, maybe to keep from crying. when we treat mountains like they are expendable, well, all i know is it all boils down to short-term profits for the company and no justice at all for the people. the companies are all the time talking about overburden. well, we are just the overburdened. their job is to remove overburdened and retrieve the

cold. we are the first level of overburdened. so we can't let them henry mufasa. we cannot get in. may looks at the trees, perhaps imagining them pushed into a valleyfield so that gigantic draglines can remove the overburden and make way for the extraction of coal. then she clenches her jaw and her face is filled with defiance. she is fierce, the tournament. i just feel like we are being assaulted from all sides. that's what it's like to live here, she says. they are taking out gas and timber and coal. all the time it never stops. there ought to be some balance. i believe they're ought to be able to mine, but they want to level everything. and i am not going to sit by and watch that happen. people ought to be able to live. thank you. [applause]

>> he's something else, isn't he packs when he joined the fight it really expanded the whole circle of it. it sort of takes my breath away. so i want to tell you that silas is going to be over there at the table signing his book and next we will have coming up jason jason howard is a writer, editor and a musician from eastern kentucky. "something's rising: appalachians fighting mountaintop removal," and the editor of we all live downstream. writing about mountaintop removal he's the former senior editor and staff writer for equals justice magazine based in washington, d.c.. his works have appeared in such publications as pace, kentucky living and the legal review and accomplished musician he plays piano, bass and also harp. harvard graduate from the george washington university with a

degree in political communication and interdisciplinary nature of political science, journalism, communications and electronic media. jason? [applause] >> hello, louisville. it is good to see louisville loves mountains. it's a great crowd and we would like to thank everybody for coming out and supporting us in the fight against mountaintop removal and we would like to thank acts that have went on. the eight larkin, wasn't she great? she is a local publisher and my next project will be out in a couple of weeks. it is an anthology called we all live downstream and it is writing about mountaintop removal from people across the country including lots of students and they are paired alongside writers like wendell berry and silas and ashley judd

and terrace tempest williams and many more so i am excited about that. i am going to take us just over the river into west virginia tonight across eastern kentucky and over the river and i am going to be reading from a piece about judy bond and it is titled the endangered hillbilly. there is a heaviness that hangs over the town of whites felt west virginia. like the fall from the nearby coal river it seeps through the streets, past the empty storefronts on up the mountainside to the rows of houses that overlooks the town. it has become the invisible resident a testament to the fly that has taken place over the years even as the profits of the mining industry soared. many of the buildings on the main street are vacant popped by broken windows with plywood. only a few businesses barely hold on and aldershot, law

office, motel. the sign for a local diner boasts fried bologna sandwiches, appalachian state. outside a handful of people gather for their midday dinner even in the midst of the laughter that trickles out onto the street one can hear the exhaustion. people in white phill are tired although the town is located within durham county the leading coal producing county in the state and county with most mountaintop removal mines nearly 30% of residents live below the poverty line. ever the faithless lover kohl has left much of whites still high and dry. this town is dying, judy bond mourns in the storefront office of coal river mountain. growing up here in the 60's this was a pretty booming town. my mother tells me that in the 40's it was even more booming. the more coal we mind that were

we get. such candor has made the 57 year old grandmother a controversial figure of around whites fell and beyond. coming from bonds is using to take her share. perfuses his allies and command some clues she is descended from top stock. it's something sustain her as the outreach coordinator for bickel river mountain grass-roots organization devoted to stopping mountaintop removal. i have the reputation of being a pretty angry person who speaks her mind, bond says. sometimes the words don't come out right. if it is a spade i call it a spade. that's why am and i cannot apologize for that. i lost my diplomacy a long time ago. bond was raised to speak her mind. the daughter of oliver thompson in the zero eastern hammer, she is proud of her country upbringing and cold river valley

where her family has lived ten generations. my first memory was my father and grandfather plowing the fields above my home, she recalls. i remember the smell of the ritz, beautiful black earth that is always in appalachia. do are the mountain and the mountainous you. she also remembers playing with her father's mining gear and finding what his paychecks made out for only $15. that discovery perhaps more than any other put a doubt in her mind about ethics and the coal industry. her father's pay was barely enough to provide for her family, she says, let load to compensate for the risk to his life and health. i remember walking up and down the railroad tracks with a pillowcase picking up lumps of coal so we could stay warm, she shakes her head. my memories of coal are not good memories. bond doesn't recall hearing her father crumble. it was my mother who complained, who reeled and ranted against

the company and industry and how they treated the miners and people. my mother was the one who talked about and mother jones and john l. lewis. her mother was also responsible for making sure her father received his black loan benefits. my daddy got old and he was used up by the coal industry and he had black lungs and needed to retire but he still had children and grandchildren he had to raise. the coal company didn't take such things into account. they did not give him compensation given an ultimatum go back to work or quit. he went back. meanwhile bonds recalls her mother hatched a brilliant scheme. my mother thought i will get a life insurance. so the agent comes to the house and came back after a physical and looked at my mother and said ms. thompson we cannot insure your husband, he is very sick and she said well what's wrong with him? and he said he has black lungs, he might live six months.

my mother said can you prove that? he said here is the paper that proves he has got black lungs despite her request the agent refused to turn over the piece of paper. not bad says bond, her mother pulled out a pistol she had talked in the big pockets of her housecoat. she pointed at that insurance man and said sir you are not leaving here with that piece of paper so that is how my father finally proved he had black lungs. [laughter] bonds decries rebel these people have lost their spine. something she blames on the coal industry. i am also proud to be a hillbilly, she shouts and lets out a big grin. i choose to call myself an appellation american because people need to realize appalachians are a distinct group. her identity is something that bond is always mentions in her speeches at an antimountaintop removal rally at a church in

harlem in may, 27 she's filled with righteous indignation. i never knew america thought i was and it until billy until i went to ohio when i was 6-years-old and found out i was an ignorant hillbilly. it amazed me. bonds feeling of inferiority has been buried deep inside her all these years and the bubbles to the surface whenever she thinks about mountaintop removal and the fact destroy her culture. in fact she is so adamant about preserving mountain culture bickel drongen lodge created a t-shirt with the rallying cry save the endangered hillbilly. they can't keep enough in stock. some people say if you are from a coal mining family and speak out against coal you're betraying your heritage. well, i pretty much say these modern-day miners are the ones vitre and their ancestors by destroying this land and who we are, bond says with her trademark bluntness. god made mountains and

mountaineers. reed made coal mining. i am sorry but that is the truth. here she pauses and looks out the picture window at her home town, a car sputters by every now and then. somebody pieces by on the sidewalk. she throws up her hand in acknowledgment leaning back on the couch her posture softens. i've lost a lot of friends over speaking out, bonds says. nobody in my family, nobody close. i consider them people who were my friends to begin with you and my daughter bought me a stun gun for christmas because i've been threatened a couple of times. you can't look down when somebody looks at you, you have got to look them in the alladi and keep going. it's an old company strategy divide and conquer and whites fell has been torn into. this is a fact often acknowledged and conversations abound the supper table and at the local dairy queen. they're a weathered man walks in wearing a t-shirt with what appears to be a man's face

morphed into that if a pig. a devilish mustache crawls its way out from underneath the snout. what gives him away the identity of this wine is the bold black text of the picture, an ode to the state's largest coal producer, massey energy stocks. the page ase besio don blankenship. a patron looks up from his chicken strip basket, nice shirt. thanks brother, the man says handing over his calloused hand, he sure is a bad one. another customer rolls her eyes and giggles nudging her friend across the table. she turns and shakes her head in disgust. bonds cackles and the mention of the man in the t-shirt. i'm glad he was out today. isn't he great? located about 10 miles down the stream from whites fell, marsh for elementary school stands in the shadow of one of west virginia's largest impoundments which is operated by massey energy.

standing 385 feet tall the issue makes large holds 2.8 billion gallons of coal slurry another endowment built just a few miles upstream from whitesville contains $8 billion of coal slurry. the ponds that surround whitesville making some residents' concern for their safety. despite repeated assurances from massey energy many including bonds still have their doubts. the disaster said buffalo creek west virginia in 1972 and martin county kentucky and 2003 are still fresh in their memory. we had better remember, she says, going on to blame the unions absence for the domination of the companies over the area residents. she recently witnessed the partnership between union and company pension traveled to washington, d.c. to attend a congressional hearing on the oversight of the surface mine act. what she saw stopped her dead in

her tracks. i was standing there with my mountaintop removal t-shirt on and looked over and there was cecil roberts rubbing shoulders coming from a union family i about puked. it makes me sick to know how corrupt the leadership in the union has become. bonds also refuses to cut the local churches any slack. a practicing christian, she credits her faith with informing her views on the environment and fighting mountaintop removal. mountaintop removal is a destruction of god's dearth, she says. more churches don't fight back because the of coal miners in the congregations and there is a history there. most of the pastors and old churches were owned by the companies. churches don't want to divide the congregations. many mountain churches are also subsidized by the companies she notes. it's very complicated. it is not black and white. they just teach the dog days and

guns and don't talk about the environment. it's changing but a lot have joined the fight. maybe more wood in list if they had been on the walk bonds took one day with her seven year old grandson. like any other child he wandered over into the creek to play. his hands full he hollered up at his grandfather what's wrong with these fish? they were dead. bonds panicked and began screaming for him to get out of the creek. the look of confusion on his face was quick. anybody who sees their grandbaby or any child in a stream full of dead fish under a corporate out all, there is no way it can affect you, she says. bonds says the coal company did more than ignore her concerns, they laughed at her. i call a lawyer up the road, she remembers. he said well, ms. bonds, what do you want? i said i wanted trains covered, i wanted them to quit running

them at night, the black water stopped, wanted the blasting to quit. he said this is coal country. he went on and on. he said, but i said i don't think you were the lawyer i am looking for so why didn't work with him. instead, bonds joined with coal river mountain lodge and 99 after seeing a rally. the calls keeps bond so busy she barely sleep. it's overtaken my life, she confessed appalachian to travel that much. i have people telling me i am doing it for my children and grandchildren but it's hard to give up the family time. in harlem she tells the delegation to the united nations she is outraged. most americans think their electricity comes from electricity fairy, that is what they think. you ask them where it comes from they say the light switch. excuse me but i know where it

comes from because my blood, sweat and tears pay for it every time you flip on that light switch you are blowing up my mountains and poisoning my babies. when you come to appalachia you are no longer in the united states of america. no, sir, you are in the united states of appalachia and king cole rules with an iron fist. bonds is determined to loosen the coal industry group in the mountains. to her it is just as much about culture that mountaintop removal was destroying as it is the mountains. they feel in parts of the road here, she points out the storefront window. james earl jones was interviewed and i think that he put it best. he said mountain people are a different type of people and their landscape makes them different types of people. they are not used to going anywhere the street rate. they have to be determined. to that, bonds adds we have to keep working, keep fighting. that has become her mantra, keep

fighting. it's something she whispers to herself in quiet moments. guidepost she uses to shell down her doubts looking out at whitesville surveying of the despair she has no intention of turning back now. i will be there every step of the way. thank you. [applause] ..

>> the book is widely regarded as the first to expose the risk. it won an award. his new book is an american gospel on family history and the kingdom of god. he will be appearing on npr's terry gross. arc. [applause] >> thank you very much. i grew up in louisville, and i spent a lot of time in carm michaels book story, and i want to say congratulations to carol and michael and the book store for being the number one independent book store in the country. that's amazing. [applause] >> we need to do with energy

what they have done with books. we need to decentralize it and localize it. i live in lexington now. we have the larger per capita carbon foot print in the >> and i want to talk about how we can begin to work on that. i know you have a really big one, too. i want to start by talking about this false dichotomy between jobs and the environment. in 2006, two miners died in an underground mine because of a conveyor belt that caught on fire, and they ended up dying of smoke inhalation. a few weeks before they died, don blankenship, the president of massey energy, sent a memo to all employees saying, if you have been asked by your group president to do anything other than run coal, you need to ignore them and run coal.

and that's what they did. they ran coal 24-7. they didn't clean the conveyor belts. they caught on fire and the miners died. the coal industry does that care about miners and their jobs. it has never done anything to help the miners of eastern kentucky. what we need to do is we need to move to a real, justice and sustainable economy in eastern kentucky that really will put people to work. >> i just want to tell a little story about that. there's a ground over in west virginia called coal river mountain watch, and they use their own money and they did a feasibility study to find out they could put 220 win turbines on the top of the mountain and generate 18% of the energy for the state, and they would have jobs far longer than any of the

coal that is there under cold river mountain. the only problem was massey energy already owned the mineral rights to cold river mountain, and win they realized there was movement for the wind project they began immediately blasting on coal river mountain. people petitions the gov of west virginia to stop this. he wouldn't. he had taken over a million dollars from the coal industry. and it just seems like there was no way that these citizens of coal river mountain were going to beat king coal, and particularly massey energy and don blankenship, and right when the blasting started to completely eliminate the top of the mountain and eliminate the possibility for a win farm, local resident, bo webb, wrote a letter to barack obama, and he

said, as i write, i brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home. i beck you to relight our flame of hope and moore immediately stop coal companies from blasting so near our homes and endangering our lives. two weeks later the environmental protection agency suspended the entire massey coal permit. [applause] >> there has never been a better time in the last 30 years to get involved with this fight than now. people in the coal industry say, wind energy would only generate 5% of the electricity in the mountains. mountaintop removal only generates 5% of the electricity in the mountains. so, now is really the time to be -- for us to be pushing the site and to begin thinking about a new economy, a sustainable

economy, for the mountains. a process that without vision the people perish, and i think what we have lacked in this state for a long time is a a vision, a vision for the mountains. this is the time to begin to push your utility company, to stop buying mountain removal coal and boeing renewable n. we have the technology to do this. we can set up the wind farms, the temperature -- turbines. we can feed all of that energy into a direct grid -- direct current smart grid. we can decentralize the power of kentucky and take the heartbreak ing power away from massey energy.

[applause] >> my teacher at the university of kentucky, guy davenport, he wrote this sentence. distance negates responsibility. and a lot of people living in lexington and louisville, don't even know where their electricity comes from. they don't know that when they build bigger homes in louisville and lexington, they're leveling the mountains of eastern kentucky, and this is what we have to close, this gap, this gap between our consumption of energy here in the cities and the production of energy in the mountains of eastern kentucky. so, i urge you to do what you can to really begin to take responsibility, to take responsibility for the way we all consume energy, and do that in whatever way you can. nobody has to do everything. we can all do something.

you can do something in your church. you can do something in your school. you can do something where you work. you can do something in your community. think about your sources of energy and what you can do to work in a way that will stop the destruction of the mountains. i think we're at a crisis now where we're -- we have begun to realize this american dream of accumulation and status and debt and stress is really not -- it's not really what we want, and so i think we're at a very radical place right now where we can say two things. one, we can't sustain the way we're living in this country, and, two, we don't really want to sustain it anyway. what we really want solid communities, local economies, and a common cause, i came

across a statistic lately that said all these -- the social scientists are measuring happiness now, and one of the findings are people are happiest when they're dancing and volunteering. you can do both tonight. i think that a testament to how much we need that sense of community, we need that sense of common cause. gandhi said something i think is very important to this fight. gandhi said, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. they have ignored us. five years ago they started laughing at us. now they're going to spend $90 million this year lobbying congress to fight us. and then we're going to win. [applause]

>> a lot of people ask me how i do this without getting depressed. and i just want to leave you with something, the best answer to that question comes from something wendell barry said when the army corps of engineers wanted to flood the red river gorge, and he wrote this. he said, a man cannot despair if he can imagine a better life and if he can enact something of its possibility. this is what we need to do. we need to imagine a better future for louisville and for the mountains, and then we need to work to enact it. thank you. [applause] >> silas house is a best-selling novelist. he teaches at lincoln memorial

university in test. jason howard is the editor of, we all live downstream and has also written for equal justice magazine. for more information on the authors go to lmy.net.edu. flsh >> mr. yum greenbrier is the author. when you think of new york city in the 50s and 60s, what do you think of? >> guest: human. well, i think that new york in the post world war ii period was in a position of people

sentence, really in the united states, and as portions were rising for a time, i think it was a famous kind of working-class city, to quote another book by joshua freeman, and it was a city that had had a lot of business during world war ii and its industries had been employing many new yorkers, and it was also a growing media capital. it was expanding its office infrastructure. it was growing in the citing of the united nations, getting international attention, and politically, and was part of -- it was sort of the capital of the resurgent u.s. following world war ii. yes, very much. so its star was rising.

>> host: what happened to new york in the 1970s? >> guest: well, it's a complicated question that has global, national, reasons behind it. it was a period of crisis on many levels, and it was a period that began really in the 1960s. and really reached the top at the mid-70s that had to do at the local level with a mismanagement of funds and a fiscal crisis of the state that led to the city technically going bankrupt, and when i say a mismanagement of funds, this is a complex story of -- it had to do with on the one hand the city government spending enormous amounts to build mass amount of

high-end private sector office space, and residential buildings, as well as maintaining its level of social spending at a time when revenues were shrinking, and that created a crisis for the city's budget. on the other hand, new york was not alone. there were many cities -- a period in which cities across the country and in the world were facing bankruptcy to do with a global recession and inflation and stag-flation. so it was a complex time, a time when the fortunes of cities in particular, given the retrenchment of the government were put in a difficult position. they were having to find new sources of rev nye. >> host: was new york losing populations in that time? >> guest: well, there was

suburbanization that had been going on in new york the surrounding suburbs. one think that was occurring was the rise of suburbs more widely in the united states, and the expansion o suburbs, and so there was loss of population to the growing sun belt region but that was going on since the 50s, so the west and southwest of the united states, and the sun belt was also -- the suburbanized sun belt was the basis of a growing political conservative movement in the country, which saw new york, despite in this period its strength, saw it as reflecting an old guard form of civic populism that the -- the republican party, the right wing republican party was trying to supplant. and so new york was losing population to some extent it was

finding itself in competition -- in serious competition with other cities that were more in that republican orbit. >> host: your book, branding new york, how a city in cries was -- crisis, was sold to the world. how severe was the crisis and what was the response. >> guest: the crisis of the 70s was extremely severe. it went into technical bankruptcy. as a result of which -- and i think the crisis on the one hadn't was produced by the local, national, global circumstances, and also was produced by the reaction. so it was crisis that befell new york but was produced by the reaction it to, so it involved the imposition of very harsh us a state -- cut back vital city

services, laid off thousands of public sector workers. led to the increased exodus of people and corporations from -- and businesses from new york as a result of these cutbacks. so it was very, very severe. and to this day, i think the reaction by the city, the degree of -- what some people call the draconian severity of their reaction has been questioned and, you know, i think -- >> host: what do you mean by that, draconian? >> guest: i think there's a kind of a calculus that -- where the priorities should be placed by the city. i think the city essentially decided that under intense pressure from the ford administration -- the final mouse daily news headline, new

york city, drop dead. which was something that ford was not only saying to new york but to many cities in the sense -- he didn't literally say it but the federal administration was saying that cities were no longer getting the kind of resources they got under the model cities programs in the 60s and the municipal funding they once got, and there was intense pressure by the city to kind of privatize -- to downsize its public spending and increase its competitiveness to attract new investments as opposed to taking a root which would have involved trying to maybe -- similar to what obama is talking about now, investing in a stimulus package that could grow the working class. there's a calculus that what was -- if one had to be lost, what could be lost was the kind of quality of life for the working and middle class of the city in order to bring in new

funds into the city in the form of new corporate headquarters, tourism, and a new upper middle class into the city. and so there was a hole restructuring -- whole re structuring of the priorities, and ultimately new forms of incentives were provided for investment and relocation and tourism, at the same time that money was cut from social spending for existing residents and workers in the city. >> host: what was the effect today of those changes, in your view? >> guest: well, i think it created what some people -- what some people started to call in the 1980s, a kind of dual city. a city that was far more divided and unequal between classes. it created a city that was far more focused on the center, on manhattan, as opposed to the

outer bur bur rohs which last out. it created a city that -- what focus on in the book is how marketing and media were used in concert with these new priorities, political and economic priorities, and also created a new imaginary, a new identity for new york. no longer was it this famed working-class capital now it became really represented as a more elite, luxury type city, and a city that could be, you know, prominently placed in advertisements in association with products that wanted that kind of cache. >> host: in fact in your book, branding new york, you talk about a famous new york brand, i heart, or i love ny. >> guest: that's right. >> host: what was the effect?

>> guest: that campaign had two phases. in the initial phase of that campaign, it was designed by the artistic director of new york magazine. i think it really simulated a kind of sol dared with new york and new yorkers, and made people think about what would the central qualities of new york which they loved and would be sorry to lose. when i say this was a severe crisis, there was a lot of hype nationwide to the glee of some people that new york was going cease to exist and there were satires about new york sinking into the ocean, the famous scene in "planet of the apes" and the statue of liberty coming out of

the sand, and there was characterizations where the city of new york ceases to exist, and "i heart new york" was appearance to that. they embraced the campaign. , as well assumption the nation, and had people identifying with the "i love new york" with the idea there was something in the urbanity and the grittiness of the city, and was playing around with the font of the campaign, the gritty newspaper style font and the softness of the heart and that juxtaposition, and the early newspaper and print and television campaigns featured prominently broadway stars and broadway shows from cats, chorus line, some of the great musicals

and productions that were -- many of which original nateed in the '70s and early '80s, and so there was also this characters from those performances gave their services for free, and so there was also a sense of the great create different and vitality of new york in association with broadway and times square. so that was kind of the first phase. i income the second phase -- this is in campaign that was launched by the state and not the city. it was called -- what now is called the empire state development corporation. what was the department of commerce at the time. they shifted focus largely away from this intense personal identification with new york and a kind of invocation of the crisis itself, to much more bland imagery of shopping and downtown finance and the skyline

of the city in association with the natural escape in the rest of new york state. i think that was part of the planning. the early part was the crisis, and later the more business development side of the campaign was what was focused on. from the begin, "i love new york" was the front stage of this deep restructuring i was talking about, and that became more and more clear as the campaign went on, and i actually also talk in the book about this transition of another side of the campaign that was less publicized and involved instead of having broadway stars perform, involved having ceos of major corporations talk about why they loved new york, and there's a 30% tax break for

relocated to the state. all of these different deals they could get. the corporations could get, was they reason they loved new york. >> host: so what is new york's brand today? >> guest: well, new york's brand -- i think "i love new york" was very successful and was held up as perhaps one of though most recognized campaigns globally and it was copied. it was not copy written until later and was allowed to virally travel, and there was an effort following 9/11 to rebrand the city. there was a feeling amongst a much more professionalized group of brander, that the value of "i heart new york" was -- they needed a new brand to do the kind of economic business

development they envisioned, and so they rebrandded immediately following 9/11 with very patriotic imagery, and given the loss of the world trade center towers which figured prominently in a lot of the commercials, as the second phase of the "i love new york" campaign, that had to be complete he revised and there was a focus on the statue of liberty and the patriotic logo, so with bloomberg there has been a shift again in an interesting way. bloomberg has spoken about needing to see new york as a luxury city again so based marketing along the lines of -- that was done in association

with the toast tract the olympics to new york that was done in association with the republican national convention, that has been done in association with a lot of different events hosted by a much larger, beefed-up, professionalized marketing apparatus that has been produced under his administration. so there's been a lot of very kind of luxury-like images that have been produced, and there's also been a new campaign called "this is new york," which associates the luxury image with a very utopian version of a diverse city that harkens back to the early days of "i love new york" and that's the kind of juxtaposition, a utopian longing with this luxury-oriented, elet oriented modification that makes these campaigns so successful and allows people not to sort of

think they're critical about them as i think they should. >> host: as a sociology prefer at uc santa cruz, why are you writing a book called "banding new york"? >> guest: i recently relocated to santa cruz. i lived in new york for 20 years before i moved to california, and so over the course of living in new york, i became very fascinated with the sociology of the city, the history of the city. i was myself a mediamaker, the representation of the city, and i became fascinated with this period, which i see is really formative in the contemporary form that new york takes, and this strange juxtaposition of on the one hand the draconian cutbacks and on the other hand the investments in marketing,

the image of the city, at the same time that resources for the livelihood of the city were being taken away. so, i think that while in new york that really fascinated me, and i have taken that fascination with me to california and tried to convince people in santa cruz of the importance of this, and i think it has resonance. i think that cities around the countrying, when faced with crisis, have a lot of these kinds of decisions to make about how to represent themselves. >> host: miriam greenberg, how a city in crisis was sold to the world is the book. >> coming up next, book tv presents after words, an hour-long program where we invite guest hosts to interview